


dear gravity (you held me down in this starless city)

by redlight



Category: SOMA (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, I Tried, Post-Canon, Spoilers, kinda dark tbh, simon is kinda done, those spider crabs freak me the fuck out, veers off into optimistic territory at the end there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-03 13:03:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5291900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redlight/pseuds/redlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon finally dives off the deep end.</p><p>Metaphorically, not literally. He's already done the literal part.</p><p>(And maybe he starts to learn how to swim to the surface again, too.)</p><p>(Metaphorically.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	dear gravity (you held me down in this starless city)

"Hey, Catherine," he says. "Could you tell me what day it is today?"

Catherine doesn't answer. Catherine shut down a while ago. Some time after she did-- he doesn't know how long-- well, eventually Simon just forced his hand through the Omnitool and tore it apart with power-suited fingers.

But whatever. Catherine's on the ARK now. She's still around. He doesn't need to worry so much. Just needs to get the job done properly, just needs to make sure she continues on in the ARK.

Simon's stopped expecting answers either way. But he still has the scraps, so. It could be a souvenir, maybe. A keepsake.

The WAU's still running around fucking things up, but he's missed his chance to get rid of it, and he doesn't _really_ care. Besides, maybe it'll figure out a way to recreate life, something new and durable to roam this new, decrepit world.

Maybe Simon'll get to see it. His power could run out in a few hours, or a week, or a few years, but...

Well.

Until then, Simon ( _or the copy of the robot that had the original Simon's conscious transplanted into it, or whatever, no big deal_ ) just keeps coping.

Coping.

 _Coping_. Yeah, that's a word for it, sure.

"Version 3, that's me," Simon muses. Keeps musing. Repeats it over and over until his voice chip overheats, or whatever. Doesn't matter if he can't talk no more. Doesn't know who to talk to.

( _Bye-bye, Catherine, off to travel among the stars_.)

He tries not to kill any remaining wildlife and starts journeying back to Omicron, and Simon hopes that the  _other_  Simon is still around.

Someone to talk to. Give his voice chip a reason to overheat.

Simon decides that he'll try not to kill Version 2, if Version 2's even still there. Maybe the other Simon wandered off, or got torn to shreds by the proxy, or maybe he just cut off his own power.

But seriously. Simon needs someone else to talk to, even if he's already talking to himself, even if he's looking for another  _him_ to talk to.

He ignores the thoughts of dragging his fingers through corpse-flesh and wires, breaking a cortex chip in half.

Oh, but now that he's started, he can't really stop thinking about it.

He used to  _be_  that body, that was  _him_ , he was Simon, except not really, not really.

Who's Simon?

Who  _is_  he?

This-- this is something that Simon, or the copy of the copy of Simon, is living through. It's not some little philosophical debate in a little sci-fi book, this is him, this is  _real_ , this is  _him_.

He is  _living_  through this little thought experiment. Or not living. Existing. Functioning. Something like that, the robot version of living.

Is Simon alive?

Simon looks around, looks at the dark deep black-blue of the ocean. There're spider crabs, creepy as fuck but unaffected by the WAU. The WAU creatures themselves, and maybe it's just him, but they seem calmer. As in, if he stops moving for long enough, those creatures would stare at him for a bit-- even though they have no eyes, _fuck_ \-- and then wander off to do some other creepy shit for a while. New lifestyle choices. Simon wouldn't judge.

Simon Jarrett is at the bottom of the sea. He is quite possibly the only  _functioning_  human out here, left on Earth. 

(Well, there's the other Simon, but they're both still...Simon. Fuck. This is why he hates philosophy.)

But Simon is still on Earth. It's ruined-- not gone, but ruined. It'll take a while to fix it. And Simon doesn't have much to do down here, except for maybe talk to himself and the fish that survived the comet. And maybe find his other self or whatever. But there's still Catherine and Simon Version 4 up in space, there is still humanity, and they tried and they _succeeded_. It doesn't matter if the ARK project was just pathetic, just a desperate last attempt at continuing a species that should've died out. But they still _succeeded_ , and Simon doesn't know what could happen next.

It could be anything. _Anything_ could happen next. Simon's tired of hating himself.

He doesn't smile. He's not able to. He can't do that anymore.

But yeah, maybe Simon would say that he's alive. Just a little.


End file.
